


Too close to tell

by deargodwhatisthatthing



Category: Gintama
Genre: Angst, Long Hair, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-22
Updated: 2016-11-22
Packaged: 2018-09-01 13:55:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8627101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deargodwhatisthatthing/pseuds/deargodwhatisthatthing
Summary: What might have happened with the prostitute in lesson 453 in the manga.





	

**Author's Note:**

> What might have happened with the prostitute in lesson 453 in the manga.

“Why do we all call him Gintoki, anyway?”  Takasugi thrust his hands deep into his pockets, his eyes on the back of Gintoki’s head, beaming away like a beacon as they wove through the narrow streets.   “Why are we on a first name basis with him, when we’re on a family name basis with each other?”

Katsura side-stepped a puddle neatly and glanced across to him.  “Do you want me to call you Shinsuke?”  He cocked his head and shaped the word doubtfully, forming his lips around the vowels.  “I could call you Sugi-kun…”

“No!”  Takasugi snapped irritably.  “We’re not _that_ close.  I just mean, what makes Gintoki so special?  Why don’t we call him Sakata?”

Katsura shrugged indifferently.  “Gintoki is Gintoki.  That’s just how it is.”  

The rain dripped from Takasugi’s hair into his eyes.  The warmth of the sake in his belly wasn’t doing much to offset the chill of a cold trickle of rain down the back of his neck and he hugged his collar closer to him – he refused to hunch his shoulders and make himself even shorter than he was.  “So is that why we’re here, in the arse-end of this god-awful backwater town.   Because everyone just loves Gintoki and will follow him anywhere?”

“No,”  Katsura replied calmly.   He didn’t appear to register that it was even raining, even though droplets clung to his eyelashes and his hair now licked wetly down the sides of his face and neck.  “Gintoki won the toss.” 

Gintoki had been winning all evening long, a petty game of one-upmanship – he’d won the coin toss over whether they should prepare for tomorrow’s battle or take the last chance they’d have for a while for a trip into town to blow off some steam; he’d caught the waiter’s eye first and got his food ahead of Takasugi; he’d matched Takasugi’s drink order plus one shot, every single goddamn time they’d ordered.   And Takasugi could see the play coming a mile off, he could see Gintoki’s sideways glance to check his reactions, could feel him waiting for the provocation to have the desired effect.  He knew it was stupid, that the smart thing was just to ignore him and rise above it or feign obliviousness like Katsura did. 

But dammit… Gintoki had been pressing those buttons for years now and he knew all the best sequences and just the right timings and if Takasugi could just fucking beat him at _something_ tonight he would be so fucking happy. 

Katsura looked sidelong at Takasugi out of the corner of his eye.  “Are you sure you don’t want me to call you Shinsuke?”

 _Yes, of course I do.  Stupid Zura.  I’ve known you for ten years, three months and 12 days.  You are the closest thing to family I have.  And I’ve known you longer than him.  You should call me Shinsuke, and I would complain, but you should do it anyway.  And you should know that without asking_.

“What are we, 8 year old girls?  Maybe I can call you Ko-chan and braid your hair.”  Takasugi scowled and followed Gintoki into the brothel, leaving Katsura outside in the rain.   

 

 

He wasn’t sure when the importance of beating Gintoki had extended out beyond the dojo and into, well, everything.  Perhaps it had always been important to him, from the moment he had set eyes on Shoyou sensei, felt the generous warmth emanating from him and had known that he wanted more of it, wanted _all_ of it.  The moment that Katsura – who was _Takasugi's_ friend, who fussed after _him_ – became Zura, and began fretting after Gintoki, sniping at and bickering with HIM.   Jealousy was, he had been repeatedly told by his father, one of his many vices.  He didn’t deny it – if anything, he embraced it.  If there was one thing his father had taught him it was that there was not enough love in this world to go around, and if you wanted some, you’d probably need to fight someone for it.

So it had felt natural to try and take all the things that Gintoki wanted and feel the fizz of pleasure at the getting of them, and that’s why, when Gintoki pointed his finger at the girl he wanted, it had been nothing less than second nature to lift his own hand to point at her too.

He was dimly aware of her smiling archly at him but in truth the first notion he had that she’d picked him was the look on Gintoki’s face and that felt so damn good.   It felt good to see those lazy, bored eyes become narrow and hard, it felt good to bow and offer his arm to her and it felt fucking _amazing_ to saunter off into the private room with the hot glow of Gintoki’s glare on his back.   

He didn’t feel so good about it now, though.  He looked at her now properly for the first time.  She was pretty, he supposed, if you like that sort of thing.  She had rather a refined air– her hair was dressed simply without the ostentation of the other girls, and her kimono was plain in style and subdued in colour.  When they had entered the room, she had knelt elegantly, preening a little at the thought of these two attractive men almost coming to blows for the pleasure of her services. 

She didn’t look so happy now, though, either.  She had offered him sake three times and had several times shifted closer to him only to have him swiftly shuffle away coldly, and they’d almost completed a full circuit of the table.  Takasugi glowered as fiercely as he knew how, but she just wasn’t giving up on the idea, and even through his discomfort and irritation, he had to admire her persistence – that glare made Amanto three times her size think twice. 

She appeared to weigh up her options and made a last ditch attempt at seduction – sipping her sake delicately, she gave the world’s least convincing hiccup and “slipped”, aiming to plant herself squarely in his lap: Takasugi shot up like a rocket, overturning the table with a crash and the woman lolloped onto the floor with all the grace of a new born giraffe. 

There was a chorus of cheers from the room downstairs and Takasugi’s face burned.  He seized the bottle of sake and took a gulp furiously, clutching the bottle as though he might need it to fend off any further advances.    

The prostitute sprang up from the floor, dripping with sake and eyes ablaze.  “Oh, fine, however you want to play it, sweetheart.”  In her exasperation, she dropped the winsome manner and refined accent.   She flapped experimentally at the spills on her kimono, tutting in vexation at the stains, and scowled at him testily.  “But you should know that if you're in this room, I'm getting paid whatever.”  She turned away and began to fiddle with a hairgrip that had loosened and he found himself staring at the back of her head.  Her long agile fingers fiddled with the fixings in her shiny black hair, and a memory stirred.      

_Waking, stiff with bruising from a conversation with his father, realising he had been covered by a blanket – Katsura, propped up by the temple steps, his head slumped to one side in his own slumber.  His hair, loosened from its ponytail, covering his face; he's drooling a little, disgusting, like a peasant.  Reaching out his hand, hooking his fingers around the curtain of hair and pulling it aside from the soft lips, the lashes that flushed out against his cheek like a sparrow’s wing._

_So soft – absurdly so, like gossamer or satin.  For all that he had grown up in the luxury of a rich family, Takasugi had never known such softness - he doubted that the finest silks in all Japan could have competed with that one glossy black sheet of hair._      

He stared at her hands working busily, impatiently, in the mass of bundles and coils, and suddenly found himself speaking.  “Take your hair down.”  

She jerked her head around at him belligerently. “What?” 

He was as surprised as she was.  He wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but found himself speaking again.  “Your hair.  Let it down.”

She gave him a look as old as time itself.  "Oh, you're one of those.  Man, I just washed it, too." 

Takasugi choked on his sake, wide-eyed.   “It's not like that,” he spluttered.   “I just... it’s… Look, forget it.”  He crossed his arms across his chest and sat abruptly, cross-legged in the middle of the room.  He was 17, he was tired, he was drunk, he was fucking mortified and he just wanted to go home.  Even if home was some shitty tent in the middle of a field.  He ran his hands through his own hair and let his breath out very slowly.  

She looked at him out the corner of her narrowed eyes and paused for some time.  Then she lifted her hands to her hair.  Slowly, deliberately, she began extracting pin after pin, long-toothed combs and mysterious handfuls of wadding.  Finally she gave a haughty shake of her head and her hair tumbled down her back, a glorious ebony sheet of black hair.  

She sat there motionless, her face turned away, head and shoulders and back awash with the dark blanket of hair.  Takasugi gazed at it dumbly for a while.  Painfully slowly, he watched himself reach out his hand hesitantly and pause, his fingertips hovering an inch from the silky strands.  _What the hell am I doing?_ He screwed his eyes shut tightly but couldn’t bring himself to draw his hand back – behind his eyelids, images rose as if they’d only been waiting for the opportunity.  _Glossy black hair running like rain down a fine boned jaw.  Loosely gathered, shifting in streams and rivers as they run toward the battle.  In the fine mist of the morning, clinging damply to lean scarred shoulders_.  As if dreaming, he leant forward and let the very tips of his fingers touch and then tease through the sheet of hair, the strands cool to the touch, the heat of skin just a suggestion below the surface.  

He felt it suddenly sheen through this fingers and opened his eyes to find her looking at him - he drew back sharply, feeling a horrifying flush of heat rise up to his face.  

"You sure there's nothing I can do for you, sweetheart?"  There was a softness in her voice.  A frown in her expression that held not fear or anger, but concern.  She held her hands up.  “You don't have to look at me if that’s not your thing.”  

She _pitied_ him.  He felt suddenly sick and he wanted to slap her away, punch and kick and slash her, how dare a _whore_ pity him.  But he was frozen.  He could tell from her expression that his composure was gone, and he couldn’t bear to think of what the lack of it revealed in his face.   She cocked her head, eyes narrowed, trying to puzzle him out.  Suddenly, she shifted and he started back as though she might pounce on him – but she simply settled herself with her back to him and then held something over her shoulder to him. 

He stared stupidly at the object and she jiggled it up and down, clucking her tongue.  “Get to work, then.  Hair don’t brush itself.”

Takasugi stared at her hand for a few more moments and then took the hairbrush from her, trying not to think of how stupid he looked.  She tossed her head and then tilted her face downwards, the silky hair drawing around her in a cave, her kimono obsuring the lines of her body until it could have been anyone. 

It could have been him.  

Slowly, so slowly, Takasugi reached out and ran the brush over the black hair, following the rough bristles with his palm, smoothing the sheet flat against the skull.   

He _wanted_ so much.  He had been _wanting_ things all his life, longing for them, pining for them – approval, respect, admiration, a sense of belonging… even things that feel softer than that, gentler and fiercer at once, things which weakened him to think of them.   But here he was again, always one crucial step away from what he really wanted.  _Gintoki complains and insults and lays about and everyone still loves him, flocks to him, trusts him._ He felt weak for wanting something that came without effort to someone else.  He brushed and brushed and ran his fingers through the hair and imagined Katsura’s hands in _his_ hair, that soft mouth open with desire at his throat, the heat of that skin against his own.  He thought of wanting and finally having, and not fearing that it would vanish.

 

 

He turned away from her as she began to pull and roll and wind her hair back into shape, not the elaborate shape from before, some simple ponytail.  She watched him out of the corner of her eye.  “You want some advice?” 

“Do I have to pay for that too?”  The sharpness was back in his voice – he’d managed to remember what his guard felt like and it was back up with a vengeance.

She cocked her head thoughtfully.  “Nah, you can consider it a freebie.”   She extracted a hairpin from between her teeth and spoke around the others still clenched in her mouth. 

“Learn to ask for what you want.  And next time ask the right person.”

“You won’t tell anyone.”  He meant it to come out in a threatening way, but it emerged more like a plea.

“Nope.”  She reaches out and ruffles his hair; to his surprise he doesn’t hate it.  The contact is comforting.  She grins.   “Mind you, I’m not going to say you were any good, either.” 

 

The others were gone when he exited the room, and he ended up trudging the two miles back to camp on his own in the dark.  After several rather muddy detours, he finally found himself approaching the glow of the campfire as the light of morning struggled over the horizon in the east.  He stopped dead right on the edge of the clearing.  

Katsura sat upright propped against a log, but slumped in sleep.  His head rested against Gintoki’s shoulder, his hair tumbled dishevelled down Gintoki's chest.  God knows how long Gintoki had sat there waiting, but he looked up now and the last dying embers of the fire lit the gleam of his eyes.  There was a humourless smile on his lips that had nothing to do with happiness and everything to do with satisfaction at the look Takasugi knew he must have been wearing on his face.  He knew, because he’d had the same smile as that earlier, in the brothel. 

Gintoki stood, toppling Zura over as he did so, stretching languidly, keeping eye contact, that same mirthless smile on his face.  He said nothing, just stepped over the log behind him and vanished into the camp. 

Katsura blinked sleepily, getting to his feet.  He noticed Takasugi with a faint “ah”, then gave a tentative smile.  “Good morning… Shinsuke.”  

Takasugi took it all in for a moment, the curl of Katsura’s lips, the warmth of sleep still layering on him like a blanket, the silver hairs on his clothing.  He suddenly realised how damp all his clothing still was, the deep ingrained chill sinking in to the fibre of his muscles, into his bones, and his stomach clenched at the same time as his fists.  He felt the bile rise in his throat. 

“It’s Takasugi to you.  I told you, we’re not that close."  It is so fucking cold.  "None of us are.  And you’re not Zura, you’re Katsura.”  He shoved past Katsura, spitting the words out quietly.   “Don’t you ever forget it.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, sorry, I did NOT set out to make him so... whiney : / I just feel like, you know, they’re pretty much still kids at this point, and 90% of the time, they’re probably just trying to keep their shit together. 
> 
> Anyway, comments make me so happy, so please savage this! : )


End file.
